Veteran journalist Paul Bauman, based in Sacramento, covers all levels of Northern California tennis. Contact him at norcaltennisczar@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @norcaltenczar.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Karlovic defeats nemesis in Australian Open

Ivo Karlovic picked a good time to earn his first career victory over Jurgen Melzer.
Karlovic, who won the Sacramento and Tiburon Challengers last October, knocked off the 31st-seeded Melzer 7-6 (3), 7-5, 6-3 Sunday in the first round of the Australian Open in Melbourne.
Karlovic, a 6-foot-10 Croat, had been 0-4 against Melzer, an Austrian who has won two Grand Slam doubles titles (both with Philipp Petzschner of Germany).
Meanwhile, Bernard Tomic outlasted 22nd-seeded Fernando Verdasco 4-6, 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-2, 7-5. Tomic, a 19-year-old Australian, reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals last year. Verdasco, a Spanish veteran, won the 2010 SAP Open in San Jose and reached last year's final there.
Second-seeded Rafael Nadal dismissed American qualifier Alex Kuznetsov, a two-time Sacramento Challenger semifinalist, 6-4, 6-1, 6-1.
Other first-round winners included:
--San Francisco native Sam Querrey.
--Third-seeded Victoria Azarenka, who won the Bank of the West Classic at Stanford in 2010.
--Eleventh-seeded Kim Clijsters, the defending champion and a four-time Bank of the West winner (2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006). New rankings -- Following are this week's world rankings of professional players with Northern California ties (change from last week in parentheses):

About Me

Paul Bauman has 36 years of professional newspaper experience, including the past 15 at his hometown Sacramento Bee. He has covered hundreds of pro tennis tournaments, including Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, the Davis Cup, the Fed Cup and the Japan Open. Bauman has earned numerous awards and was nominated for the inaugural class of the Sacramento Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009. He wrote “Agassi & Ecstasy,” a biography of Andre Agassi published in 1997, while working at the Las Vegas Review-Journal in Agassi's hometown and was named the 1986 Nevada Sportswriter of the Year during a stint at the Reno Gazette-Journal. Bauman served as the editor of the ATP newspaper in the Dallas area in 1982-83 and graduated from Stanford University in 1977.